| Through
a Glass Historically
Historian's Perspective on the War in Iraq
By Professor Bruce Kuklick
I’ve been asked on many occasions to talk about current
events. Being a historian means that you believe you can’t
really understand what’s going on until 30 years later,
after a generation has passed. What historians can do is
look at patterns that have occurred in the past. Those patterns
may or may not be relevant to questions people are asking
today about the war in Iraq. Here are some examples of what
I mean.
From
the time of the Spanish-American War, this country has flaunted
the essence of evil in its enemies. When the battleship Maine was
destroyed in Havana Harbor, William McKinley literally got
down on his knees and prayed for divine guidance in striking
out against the evil that was Spain. Americans demonized
Germany in both world wars and the North Koreans and Vietnamese
in subsequent wars. Today, with the exception of Nazi Germany,
it is generally thought that the evil attributed to our enemies
never really existed. There were differences of opinion—there
were good guys and bad guys—but there wasn’t
the kind of incarnate malice that was used to justify entry
into these wars.
The second example is the standard argument people make
that civil liberties take a hit during wartime. In World
War I, A. Mitchell Palmer, a renegade attorney general, deported
and jailed all sorts of foreigners and immigrants during
the first Red Scare. In World War II, there was the incarceration
of the Japanese in the detention camps. The Korean War is
well known for the rise of McCarthyism, and the Vietnam War
is associated with expansion of the powers of the FBI and
the CIA.
What really happens in wartime, I think, is not just a curb
in civil liberties but exaggerated responses to them. Although
you had the Red Scare during World War I, you also had the
impetus for women’s suffrage that led to the Fourteenth
Amendment. Besides relocation camps, World War II also brought
an expansion of work opportunities for African Americans
and women. The Korean War helped integrate the armed services,
and there was an efflorescence of social movements during
the Vietnam War—a general loosening of American culture,
the Civil Rights Movement, the movement for gay rights, and
the women’s revolution.
The last thing is what I call the relatively untouched nature
of the U.S. during wartime. Teddy Roosevelt called the Spanish-American
War a “splendid little war” because it gave us
a chance to flex our muscles—at very little cost. World
War II was an enormous conflict, and there were 375,000 American
deaths. The Soviet Union had a comparable population and
lost 20 million. We used the Russians like mercenaries in
that war, supplying them with enormous quantities of tanks,
clothing, and armaments. When we do get into war, we rely
on our enormous technological superiority. And when Americans
begin to take casualties, as happened in Korea and Vietnam,
the Truman and Johnson administrations were driven from office.
I watch CNN a lot, as I’m sure many of you do. The
way the media intrudes on the private miseries of American
families who have lost kids in Iraq seems obscene to me,
especially in comparison to what the Iraqi people are suffering.
What it suggests is that Americans have very little sense
of how ghastly war is. This, it seems to me, makes us more
willing to engage in war.
Bruce Kulkick, C’63, Gr’68, is the Roy F.
and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of
American History. This article is
adapted from a talk he delivered in the
fall at the home of Pam, CW’73, and
Tony Schneider in Bryn Mawr, PA. |
